Mars Hill pastor says he’s sorry and will not tweet again

Mark Driscoll has apologized to members of his Mars Hill Church for a scheme — using their resources — to get on The New York Times’ bestseller list and has promised to stop his tweets, lower his profile and get back to the Lord’s work.

“To be clear, these are decisions I have come to with our Senior Pastor Jesus Christ,” Driscoll said in a March 15 internal letter to members of the church, which has 15 locations and boasts 14,000 members.

Driscoll has faced plagiarism allegations over his book “Real Marriage” — his publisher, Harper Collins, has added footnoting — and earlier this month a document revealed what a marketing firm called ResultSource Inc., did to put him on the Times bestseller list.

The document revealed that Mars Hill was asked to place 6,000 individual orders for the book, and to buy 5,000 bulk copies, with the purchases being disguised by a multiplicity of different payments and split up into multiple different orders.

“I am sorry I used this strategy and will never use it again: I have also asked my publisher not to use the ‘. . .1 New York Times bestseller’ status in future publications, and I am working to remove this from past publications as well,” Driscoll wrote.

The Driscoll mea culpa went on to pledge that the Mars Hill minister will seek to maintain a lower profile. Driscoll confessed that so-called celebrity pastors often have their heads turned “until they decide to leave and go do other things.”

“I don’t see how I can be both a celebrity and a pastor, and so I am happy to give up the former so that I can focus on the latter,” he wrote.

Driscoll promised to be not only quieter, but calmer, writing: “In my last year or two, I have been deeply convicted by God that my angry-young-prophet days are over, to be replaced by a Bible-teaching spiritual father.”

Driscoll said he is cutting back on his writing, and lowering his profile on the internet. “To reset my life, I will not be on social media for at least the remainder of the year,” he wrote. “The distractions it can cause for my family and our church family are not fruitful or helpful at this time.”

“At the end of the year, I will consider if and when to reappear on social media, and I will seek the counsel of my pastors on this matter.”

Driscoll has 466,000 Twitter followers. And he has produced some virulent and controversial tweets.

When President Obama was inaugurated for his second term, Driscoll wrote: “Praying 4 our president who today will place his hands on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.”

On Jan. 10, 2014, he tweeted: “If you are not a Christian, you are going to Hell. It’s not unloving to say that.”